Introduction
The scientific literature has found multiple relations between gender violence and several health consequences [
1,
2], including chronic pain, increased risk of sexually transmitted diseases, depression, and even suicidal tendencies, among others. Given the graveness of this public health problem, the prevention of such health outcomes should include the prevention of violence against women and girls. A key for preventing health consequences related to gender and sexual violence is to analyze the factors that lead adolescents to subdue to it. This article presents for the first time the analysis of one of the specific mechanisms that promote such violence: peer pressure. Identifying and eliminating peer pressure is a necessary step in the prevention of the health outcomes related to gender violence.
Although it is hard to determine the exact prevalence of gender and sexual violence, it is estimated that around 27% of women aged 15 to 49 worldwide have suffered physical or sexual violence [
3,
4]. Considered a global public health issue [
5], research has reported several physical and mental health consequences of suffering such violence. Among others, chronic pain [
6]; gastrointestinal disorders [
2]; self-harm and suicidal ideation or attempt [
5,
7]; substance abuse [
8]; an increased risk of suffering HIV [
9]; depression [
10], or psychological distress [
11] have been found as consequences of suffering gender and sexual violence. These data are even more alarming as violent sexual-affective relationships have a strong prevalence among adolescents and youth [
4].
Among other causes [
12], research has identified a coercive dominant discourse which is socially constructed and presents men with violent and disdainful attitudes and behaviors as more attractive and sexually desirable than those with egalitarian ones [
13,
14]. This discourse is learned via socialization, as it is present in central developmental contexts in childhood and adolescence [
15]: peer interactions, the media, social media, magazines, and literature for young people [
16,
17]. Research in various fields, including socioneuroscience, has shown that continued exposure to this model makes some girls build a pattern of attraction towards violent boys and embark on unhealthy sexual-affective relationships [
18‐
20]. Importantly, even if this model can be identified in stable and sporadic relationships (often referred to as hookups), research has shown a greater tendency to choose violent boys for hookups and non-violent boys for stable relationships [
21].
The peer group plays an essential role in girls’ and boys’ socio-emotional development [
22]. Social interactions in the peer group can become one more context of socialization into the coercive dominant discourse [
23,
24]. Research has shown that when adolescents talk with interest and desire about boys with violent attitudes and behaviors, their attraction patterns are reinforced to be submissive to the coercive dominant discourse [
25], increasing the risk of engaging in violent and disdainful hookups.
Still, little has been examined regarding specific interactions in the peer group that foster preferences for sexual-affective relationships with boys with violent attitudes and behaviors as well as promote engagement in such type of disdainful hookups. Given the health consequences of such violence among adolescent females, it is urgent to examine in depth the mechanisms by which peer group pressure and coercion occurs. The research reported in this article addresses this gap by aiming at describing coercive interactions and dialogues among a group of 15- and 16-year-old adolescents that foster disdainful hookups as a required step to prevent health consequences related to gender violence.
Methods
Participants
The study sample consists of 41 female students from three different high schools in Barcelona (Spain), two public and one semi-private. The participants have diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds, and all attended 4th grade (ages 15 and 16) at the time of the study.
The inclusion criteria were (a) students had provided informed written assent and (b) their parents had provided written informed consent for participating in the project. Participants in the communicative discussion groups were randomly selected. All the schools decided to participate freely without any economic incentive.
Instruments
Eight communicative discussion groups were carried out. The communicative discussion group allows a collective interpretation of reality through egalitarian dialogue among all members. For carrying it out, a natural group of people who have some common link is created in a natural environment of trust. In our case, all participants belonged to the same class, and the discussion groups were conducted in their high schools. The researcher was integrated into the group and helped to facilitate dialogue between peers, ensuring that communication was not subject to the imposition of some opinions on others.
Material and Procedure
Before implementing the study, ethics committee authorization for the study protocol was obtained. Once the protocol was approved, information sessions were held in the high schools with the directors, teachers, parents, legal guardians and the adolescents themselves. In these sessions, as well as during the whole project, researchers gave all the necessary explanations and answered any questions. Afterwards, the informed consent was completed. These consents ensured voluntary participation in the study, the anonymity and privacy of the participants, and the possibility of withdrawing at any time. To ensure anonymity, the use of codes and pseudonyms was guaranteed. The consent form explained the details of the study. The directors of the center also signed a letter that included all this information.
The project design and implementation process were based on the communicative methodology, which has been shown to achieve social impact in gender violence research [
26,
27]. This methodology implies the participation and egalitarian dialogue among those involved in the research.
Data Analysis
The following categories compound the coding scheme: (1) Harassment in adolescent peer groups to engage in sporadic and violent sexual relationships; (2) Harassment to destroy stable relationships. Within these two main categories, subcategories have been established: (1a) Inciting to reproduce violent attitudes in girls: attitudes which encourage girls to imitate the behavior of violent boys in sexual-affective relationships in which they hook up with different people and then talk badly about them; (1b) Harassment leads them to hook up with violent boys: friends pressure girls to hook up with violent boys, presenting them as attractive; (1c): Pressure to link attractiveness with violent males and to normalize violent attitudes: friends coerce girls to end up seeing violent boys as attractive and normalize their violent attitudes; (2a): Strategies for harassing friends with stable relationships: friends coerce girls who had a healthy relationship to hook up with violent boys; (2b): Process and consequences of bullying to break stable relationships: strategies used to harass people to hook up with violent boys and the consequences that it entails. A discourse analysis of the specific interventions that respond to the coding schemes has been carried out.
Ethical Approval
The study was conducted following the guidelines of the Declaration of Helsinki (World Medical Association, 2013) and Horizon 2020 (European Commission). The study protocol was revised and approved by the Andalusia Government, specifically by the Research Ethics Committee of the Virgen de la Macarena and Virgen del Rocío Hospitals.
Discussion
This study sheds light on the role that power interactions among adolescents in peer groups can have in learning the coercive dominant discourse and engaging in abusive sexual relationships. Such peer pressure is one of the mechanisms that promotes gender and sexual violence; it is therefore necessary to address it to prevent and eliminate health outcomes related to violence against women and girls.
Our findings suggest that some girls influence their friends to reproduce the model of toxic masculinity [
28]. The attitude of violent boys who make out with girls and then talk badly about them is criticized by the study participants. However, they believe that this attitude is rewarded in boys, often labeling them as “popular” in the peer group. On the contrary, those men’s environment criticizes girls who act that same way [
15]. Far from trying to transform the abusive behavior that occurs in these relationships, our participants shared that some girls choose to encourage their female friends to act in the same way.
The fact that the peer group speaks well of boys who represent a violent masculinity is of great importance. Several participants reported feeling pressured to like and even hook up with boys they did not like first. They mention two types of strategies for this purpose. One is to constantly repeat to a girl that she likes a guy until she ends up questioning her own feelings, saying yes to respond to the pressure, or believing that she really likes that guy. A second strategy is to praise those boys by showing that they are valued in the peer group, saying things like “he’s got standards” or “he’s cute.” This type of language used among the peer group to talk about those boys responds to what research has called “language of desire” [
15,
26]. The “language of desire” has been shown to have greater impact on adolescents’ affection and behaviors than the “language of ethics.” The former predominates in the dialogues in the peer group, in the media, etc. However, the “language of ethics” [
29], used in contexts such as the family and the school, speaks of sexual-affective relationships from an ethical perspective in which what is “convenient” is described, often as boring and moral [
21,
29].
Pushing girls to have disdainful hookups means highly raising their likelihood to be victimized from gender and sexual violence. Symptoms such as chronic pain and gastrointestinal symptoms [
2,
6], depression and anxiety [
10], suicidal ideation [
7], or cognitive and emotional damage [
30] are only some of the negative health outcomes related to gender violence. Our study also advances this knowledge as it shows that, according to our participants, peer pressure to have disdainful hookups can imply a series of strategies that may include bullying, such as taking photos of the disdainful hookup without consent and sending them to the girl’s boyfriend and to her social context. One of the consequences of such bullying, as reported by our participants, is the victim’s suicidal ideation and committing suicide. Our study advances that peer group pressure to have disdainful hookups can relate to severe psychological distress and suicidal ideation.
A final type of coercion detected in the data was the pressure against girls in stable relationships to break them. Stable relationships are presented as “boring” by many adolescents, pressuring girls who have them to go out and have disdainful hookups. Under the premise that “fun” is making out with guys with disdainful and violent attitudes, we have been able to collect examples of how some girls are pushed to have disdainful hookups with them.
The present study has limitations. One is that although previous research on the coercive dominant discourse has shown its existence in different countries and contexts, the research reported here is a qualitative study and its findings cannot be generalized. Future research can address this limitation by inquiring into this topic in different countries and with adolescents with other ethnic and racial backgrounds. Moreover, further research should examine protective peer interactions that prevent adolescents from engaging in disdainful hookups and thus protect female adolescents from the health consequences of suffering gender violence.
Despite the limitations, the present study shows evidence on the ways in which peer pressure can lead many adolescent and young girls to have disdainful hookups where they suffer multiple forms of violence. In this way, this study sheds light on peer pressure an essential element that researchers, policymakers, educators, and different social agents and citizens need to take into account and address for the prevention of the health consequences of gender and sexual violence.
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